The location and decent price for the area is what attracted us to this community, but we have had more problems in the few short months we have lived here than all of the other places in mine and my husband's last decade of rental history combined. To put it plainly, things have become so bad that I actually had to consult a lawyer for the first time in my life yesterday, who was all too familiar with Capri/Greystar due to the sheer volume of angry former Capri residents he has been asked to represent. These people are slumlords who will expect you to live in deplorable conditions and then do everything they can to rip you off before you finally manage to escape.
There are several things to be aware of, which the leasing office staff will conveniently neglect to mention as they rush you through signing a lease. The heating/cooling system is not the standard central heat and air system that most of us are accustomed to, but rather some archaic contraption involving the ceiling fans and a big, ugly radiator thing that runs along the (popcorn asbestos) ceiling. They turn the chiller system off altogether during the "winter", and then take over a week to get it turned back on, despite 90+ degree temperatures and a legal obligation to take care of it within 48 hours. The "flat fee" for utilities is not really a flat fee at all, but a variable average of the utility consumption of all the tenants. You may or not have hot water on any given day due to the shared water heaters. In the last three months, our water has been completely turned off twice for as long as half a day. There is a mandatory $25/month fee, for "trash valet", in which someone may or not show up during a two hour window in the evening Monday through Thursday to collect the trash left at people's front doors, which in turn leaves the hallways smelling like hot garbage. The fire alarm will go off frequently in the middle of the night for every reason under the sun except for actual smoke/fire, sometimes for as long as twenty minutes, followed by a noisy visit from the fire department. There is not enough parking, and the limited parking spaces they do have are so small that the sides of my car are now covered in dents and scratches. The chlorine/pH levels in the pool can't possibly be compliant with health code, and we have heard that the pool is often closed for not meeting health department standards. You will likely be woken up every weekday at the crack of dawn by either the trash truck, the landscaping crew, or the lovely sound of jackhammers fixing the dilapidated sidewalks.
God forbid you might need help from maintenance. Within weeks of moving in, our 6-foot bathroom mirror came detached from the wall and was hanging by the corner of the medicine cabinet, ready to fall and shatter at any moment, and the garbage disposal had leaked water all over the cabinets and everything in them as well as the floor. When I called the office to ask someone to send maintenance, they were rude and completely unconcerned, then took two days to actually send someone to fix it. When maintenance finally did come, he used bathtub caulk and duct tape to glue the mirror back onto the wall, which wound up staining and discoloring the mirror in spots. I recently requested another maintenance visit for a leaking dishwasher, as well as roaches and crickets in our apartment. After submitting the work order online, I didn't hear anything back for days, until the maintenance man finally showed up at our door unannounced and proceeded to tell me (incorrectly) that the dishwasher was not leaking and I must have just spilled water on the floor. The dishwasher is still leaking and I would rather hand-wash our dishes than deal with asking them again to come fix it.
For months, we endured all of this without complaint and continued to pay our rent on time, just counting the days until we could move out in May, as stipulated by our lease. However, I woke up yesterday morning to a rude email from Martha in the office saying that the 60-day notice we were apparently required to give, but never informed of, was due two weeks ago. They are now trying to put us on the hook for two weeks worth of rent for an apartment we will have moved out of as scheduled in our lease agreement. We were not verbally made aware of this unique 60-day notice requirement when we signed, nor did they bother to communicate with us about it when the time came. Apparently what they like to do is hope that you won't remember a few words in tiny font on a document you signed months ago, then wait as long as possible after the deadline to then inform you that are responsible for the rent 60 days out, regardless of whatever you agreed to in your lease, or the fact that Arizona law only requires 30 days. Then, they will coerce you into signing a form agreeing to the "revised" move-out date under the threat that every day it goes unsigned is another day of the 60 days they will continue to charge you rent. Two weeks rent might be pocket change to a company like Greystar, but to us it is the $500 I had saved to give my little brother for graduation, which I now have to use for rent on an apartment I won't be using. Forget about trying to reason with the office staff in the likely event that you have a problem. Everyone we have had to interact with has been unbelievably rude and incompetent. In fact, working for Greystar must suck as badly as renting from them, because it doesn't seem like there is a single surviving employee left in that office from when we started renting here a few months ago.
